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Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Review: Paby Smart Pet Locator and Activity Tracker

Whether it be from the fright of 4th of July fireworks, a door or gate accidentally left open, or just a stubborn pooch that doesn't like to come when called, for animal lovers there is nothing worse than losing your furry little friend! Given today's technology tracking down your pet is easier than ever, and today we have a newly launched option that will do just that and more.

The Paby GPS tacker is a real-time smart tracker that monitors a pet’s location and activity utilizing a combination of advanced 3G GPS (cellular), LBS (Location Based Services) and Wi-Fi technologies. Which unlike many of the trackers we've reviewed before, and many on the market, means you can track your dog or cat (or child) just about anywhere at anytime!

Paby is a small durable and waterproof device that offers not only a smart tracker, but RGB LED flashing light for added pet safety and a high fidelity waterproof speaker that plays a sound to alert the user (via the mobile app) when their pet is nearby.

The GPS tracker incorporates the latest battery technology with a gel state polymer lithium ion battery and is built to last with PC ABS, laser direct structuring, UV coating and in-mold decoration.

Getting started with Paby the things you need to know!

Paby requires a cellular network connection to properly track your pet. It isn't required and you will have some functionality by using Wi-Fi, however I strongly suggest adding on a mobile data plan. Without it, if your pet wanders out of a Wi-Fi area, you'll be out of luck.

For this you have two options - Option 1: Paby comes with a free SIM card and offers network subscription plans starting at $4.99 per month at http://www.paby.com/plan/ (those purchasing an annual network service plan through Paby will receive 30 days of free service). Option 2: customers with AT&T and T-Mobile have the option to use their existing wireless network.

Setting Up Your Paby

All your tracking and features will be controlled through Paby's free App (iOS and Android). The App itself is fairly intuitive and pretty straight forward. Before you get started I'd suggest reviewing the FAQ and doing a quick once over with the App just to familiarize yourself with the features. From my experience the icons aren't very descriptive and the manual is limited on explanations as to what they do.

Once you have the App installed, make sure you charge your device to full capacity. From there pairing is fairly straight fwd. Once the device is paired the App will allow you to view custom reports and alerts, designate virtual fences to sound alerts and set sound or LED alerts. All tracking and locations are shown via Google Maps, with a detailed view of location history charting where your pet has been on a given day.

For those that want to keep their pets healthy and active Paby offers additional features such as a health monitoring system which tracks steps, sleep and intensity of work out/play time and daily exercise recommendations based on your pet’s breed, weight and age.

Testing and Conclusion

We tested out Paby tracker out over the course of a couple weeks and were pleasantly surprised at how well it performed. Tracking was very precise and the activity tracker worked well. During most of our testing battery life was a little on the weak side, but that may be attributed to us putting it through more rigorous testing and using more features than normal. Overall we saw plenty of power for two to three days of variable testing, plenty for most tracking situations.

As mentioned we did have a few issues with working out what each of the icons on the menu screen does, but once we worked that out things went smoothly. I had a few problems with getting alerts to work properly, and would have liked to have seen a dedicated alerts button for one time alerts rather than having to turn them on and leave them on through the tacking function. Ideally, with one time alerts, I could train my dog to check-in with me (hunting dog style). he LED's function great and offer a nice touch for walking your dog or keeping an eye on them in the yard at night.

At $79.99 the Paby comes in pretty much in range with other options out there, but it is one of the few we saw with magnetic charging, IP67 water-resistant rating, LED lighting and a decent design set. It comes available in a variety of colors and patterns seen above (“Spider Red,” “Future Green,” “Allstar,” “Midnight Black” and “Bubble Pink”) and is available now at www.paby.com. All in all I can definitely give it a nod as being worth the price when it comes to piece of mind for you pet owners!